PINEWOOD

It’s Pinewood Derby time. Back in the 1950’s, out on the west coast a kid wasn’t old enough to participate in the Soap Box Derby. So his dad, a Cub Scout Master created the Pinewood Derby. Everything the same as far as being gravity propelled, only smaller. Each kid gets a block of pine wood, 2” x 3” X 10”, 4 plastic wheels and 2 axels. They design and cut out a race car body, sand it, paint it and mount the wheels. Then on the big day, they race head to head, down a miniature ramp until the two remaining racers go for the championship. The first year, only the boys in that Cub Pack participated but soon, it was the alternative for too young-little brothers everywhere. Now it’s in every school, scout troop, Boy’s & Girl’s Club and church group.

Several Pinewood racers have taken shape in my wood shop over time and a new generation came through today. Granddaughters Mahala and Cecilia are first time, newbies. Son, Jon brought them over for lunch, sawing & sanding. For starters they choose pumpkin pancakes over soup and sandwich. Six hands breaking eggs, pouring milk, stirring and pouring batter; we took turns flipping cakes and when it was done, the sink was full of dirty dishes, we were full of pancakes and we headed to the basement.

They traced the profile onto the pine wood block and I ran the bandsaw. Watching them hand sand for the first time was as funny as it was awesome. Mahala wanted to wear my respirator and safety glasses. Lucky I have two sets. I loaded new sand paper on a couple of sanding blocks and they set straight to work with the tedious, hand sanding. So there they were, rubbing sanding blocks over edges and flat surfaces, making sawdust. Sawdust has a way of collecting on tools, bench top, floor and often needs to be collected and dispatched. The girls were as enthusiastic about sweeping sawdust as they had been about sanding. Jon polished axels with emery paper and the girls finished, taking turns running the shop vac. We got all the dust up and Celia asked if I had any pink paint. Jon told her that her mother was in charge of painting and that got us off the hook. 

Two hours later, getting ready to leave, we went through my wind-up toy collection, noting which ones were favored. The little mouse that does back flips appealed to Celia while Hala had trouble making up her mind.  Really nice way to spend a Saturday afternoon. We’ll do it again next year.

LONG DAY

6:00 a.m. this morning, Baton Rouge, LA; I was on I-12, eastbound at 40 degrees, then 15 hours & 50 minutes, 908 miles, 3 gas stops, 2 meals, 6 pees later & 7 degrees, arrived in Grandview, MO. My plan was to drive until it got dark but it went like this. The wind out of the north was testy, made driving difficult. On overpasses and open spaces it pushed us around and I was reminded of my old dune buggy. It had a really short wheel base; tar strips on the highway would bump us off course at 50 mph. So I had to pay attention and use both hands, all the time. Cars passing would create a Bernoulli effect between us and the Mazda wanted to move over, close and personal. Semi’s just the opposite; got a lift and a push toward the shoulder. It made driving with the cruise control almost impossible, more trouble than it was worth. 

I pulled off at the Macomb, MS exit; drove a mile into town looking for breakfast. They had all the fast food stops near the exit and the old town was bare bones. Nothing but empty store fronts, pay day loans and finger nail salons. All I could think of was the town’s reputation from the 60’s. Macomb, MS was Ku Klux Klan-Central. Couldn’t help but think about all the different ways they had for killing troublesome blacks and Yankee trouble makers. Hang ‘em, shoot ‘em, burn ‘em, drown ‘em, turn the dogs on ‘em, explode ‘em, run over ‘em, baseball bat ‘em and they would still be working at it if the world hadn’t come with cameras. All of Mississippi was subject to that deadly bigotry but Macomb was in an orbit of its own. Realized I didn't want to eat there; was glad to get back on the InterState. 

Another hour, through Jackson, MS I didn’t want to get off the path too much. I lost a lot of time in Macomb and didn’t want to do that again. There were a couple of places but I was past the exit before I saw them and decided not to go back. Another 15 minutes north, Canton, MS is where I usually get fuel. LOVE’S Truck Stop doesn’t have a kitchen, just an Arby’s fast food and I wasn’t buying. It was starting to look like lunch before I could find eggs and bacon. Then I saw the black and yellow sign; Waffle House. I hadn’t been in one of those in over 20 years. My kids and their friends would eat there cheap, even with the smell of hot grease and full ash trays on every table. I was already off the road so I stopped. No ash trays and the grease wasn’t as bad as I remember. I got cheese in my scramble, 3 strips of bacon were just right and hash browns, not bad. My kids used to cover a glass of water with a piece of paper and turn it upside down quickly, on the table top, then pull the paper out; left it for the waitress, no way to upright it without a big spill and clean up. 

The higher the sun rose, the stronger the wind and I started thinking about stopping early, sleep at Motel 6 in West Memphis and hope for calm winds tomorrow. Traffic was snarled and ugly there so I kept on, keeping on. I had two water bottles and the sun was starting to angle down, behind my left shoulder. It was after 3:00 and I decided to stop in Cape Girardeau, MO. The Cracker Barrel restaurant there is easy to spot with plenty of time to make the exit. I stopped there once, several years ago. The host asked me “Smoking or Non Smoking?” I asked if she was kidding and she didn’t even blink. “You mean they still let people smoke in restaurants here?” Her boss looked over from behind the cash register. The girl said I could sit in the no smoking section. I told her, “You know, a no smoking section in a restaurant is like a no peeing section in a swimming pool.” Her boss came over and asked if there was a problem and I told her no. I don’t remember where I ate but I hadn’t stopped there since. But they took away the ash trays in Canton, MS, maybe the world would catch up to the Cape. Looking at the menu, I realized there was nothing on it that I wanted. When the young guy came to take my order I asked him for directions to the nearest Chinese place. Turns out, it was just across the highway; The Great Wall Buffet. I was liking this a lot better. Hot & Sour Soup, ginger green beans, fried zucchini, stuffed crab and fried shrimp. The young lady who seated me spoke perfect english, in a soft, measured tone. But when another attendant said something to her, they slipped into Chinese, talked over each other, louder, higher pitched and much faster. I think they were naming children. When I was in the army, someone told me, “The way Chinese choose a name for their kids is to throw a tray of silverware down a staircase.”  But she was nice, brought me a second pot of hot tea without me asking. I drank of my water, leaving the glass right side up and left a nice tip.

It got dark on me south of St. Louis but the wind had died down and I made a deal with myself. If I saw a Motel 6 in time to stop, I would. But I didn’t, and I didn’t. So I’m unloaded in Grandview, plugged in and ready to jump in the shower. It takes a day for me to recoup after driving all day. I’ll do something useful but the nap will come before lunch and another one in the afternoon.

NEW BEGINNINGS

We have all been baptized into the new year. Hangovers should be worn off and it’s Friday, a work day for those lucky enough to have a job but not lucky enough to get a four day weekend. Being retired, no boss, no classroom full of teenagers waiting for me to unlock the door, a four day weekend is like being given a fork to eat your pop corn.  I’m doing breakfast in the kitchen, hot chocolate and peanut butter cookies, left over from the football games last night. For a few hours we eat from the unhealthy menu and lose ourselves in the moment. Living in the moment is one thing but being lost in it is another. One is about paying attention and the other is not. But it is a new year and we get to make believe things will be different; better than before. I’ll do my part but the man on the radio is no help. Except for football scores, the new year sounds very much like the last one. 

I don’t make New Year’s resolutions; a year has too many days. I’ll eat right and exercise day to day. When I confine my expectations to what happens today, then what happens today becomes more imporant.  When I fail, I forgive myself and start over. You don’t want failure to become a habit but you don’t live in fear of it either. Without failure to punctuate this life, our learning curve would be a flat line. I love the idea of new beginnings. The first day of a road trip is always good, maybe the best. The lead into a good song is almost always better than the fade. Hello kisses are better than the goodbye. Something about the marriage of hope and anticipation that lifts us higher than reflection on a good time. I’ve made several new beginnings already this morning. 

I don’t know how many times I’ve been to the French Quarter. It’s like everything else I suppose. You usually find what you look for. I know people who found it a dreadful place and never want to go back. Some were high minded moralists and others just had a bad day. I always expect to see something new, something that begs a question I hadn’t considered before and I’m seldom disappointed. I still have the weekend plus a day or two before I point the Mazda uphill. I will have to agonize whether to have a praline. If I do I’ll want another, and another; and if I don’t, I’ll feel cheated. What’s more sinful than caramelized sugar and pecans? Then I’ll browse through the tourist traps with their lusty, inappropriate T-shirts. My favorite is the black one with big white letters, ‘JESUS LOVES YOU’; below that the small print reads, ‘. . . but the rest of us think you’re an Ass Hole.’ I’ve bought that shirt several times and always been talked out of it up north somewhere. The pralines are up in the air but I will have a 1/4 muffuletta at Central Grocery, on Decatur St. Olive salad and hard salami on a 9” bun is too much for me. I used to split one with a friend but even that’s too much now. Peeling the butcher paper off a 1/4 muffuletta will be just one ‘New Beginning’ in a long day of fresh starts. 

O.K. 2015, it will take a while to get used to signing cheques, receipts and forms. I still need to buy a new calendar/organizer. Most of my notes and memos go in the computer but I keep a hard copy in my laptop case as a backup. Have no idea when my dentist or doctor want to see me but they will call, they always do. It’s 70 degrees in Louisiana but it will be serious winter when I get back to where I came from. I don’t mind the cold but I hate the gray. Swim early, coffee with amigos, afternoon making saw dust and find some music after dinner. Sounds like winter. 

THE NOW

New Year’s Eve; traditional time for reflection, resolutions and taking stock. I try to keep myself focused on the present, in the moment, on the Now as Eckhart Tolle says. After they start paying you to stay away from work, if you wait for the culture to point the way or throw you a line you can fall off the cart altogether, on the fast track to irrelevance. So I ask myself what is important to me, right now. As soon as I get an answer, that’s what I act on. I’ll ask myself again in a few hours. Ironically, that’s what we should all be doing, young to old. But Tolle was right when he wrote his little book and nothing has changed. All I’ve ever had to work with is the Now and I still have that. 

2014 was good. I finished with good health, family, good friends and enough to pay my bills. I covered a lot of miles, gave my passport some exercise and captured a few great photographs. There were speed bumps and a tumble or two but you don’t get redo’s; I won’t mull over it. 2015 has a loose schedule but schedules have a way of morphing into something else. My daughter and I have seats reserved on a river raft for the end of August. We ran away from home, the two of us, in June of ’89. Everybody else in the family had jobs and we saw the writing on the wall. If we stayed home we would be mowing grass and cleaning house all summer. So we threw bikes and sleeping bags in the pickup and headed for the west coast. Together, we discovered the Grand Canyon. You may have seen the movie and heard the stories but you can’t experience it vicariously. We promised ourselves that someday, we would float the Colorado from top to bottom. I was there four years ago with my granddaughter; realized if we were going to float, it had to be soon. This is the year. 

The Now has me in Baton Rouge for the New Year and I’ll work on celebrating some bubbly at midnight. The Grand is too far out for me to give it much thought. Tomorrow will be high priority when it becomes the NOW, and the day after that as well. But the morning I find myself on the beach at Lee’s Ferry, AZ and we are packing our dry bags onto the raft, it will be the only thing on my mind. 

I collect quotes; not a bad way to close out the blog for 2014. Most quotes are too long for me and either cliche or clever word play. But some are worth keeping. These are favorites.

“What day is it?”

“It’s today,” squeaked Piglet.

“My favorite day,” said Pooh.

A.A. Milne

 “Do not dwell in the past nor dream of the future.                                                    Concentrate on the present moment.”

Buddha

12/21/14

Holiday atmosphere had been dampened by several days of low clouds and rain. But 12/21 has nice symmetry, maybe a little mojo working. Sunday was the only day my kids and their kids could rendezvous for food and gift exchanges and we jumped on the opportunity. Had we costumes, one might have mistaken the table for a medieval feast. Grapes and cherries, cheese, veggies, chips and dip; chile substituted for roast pig and we used spoons. After gifts were opened we settled in for a board game that had everyone drawing cards to find out what kind of ridiculous act they had to perform in front of the others. We had to set ground rules about smart phone videos and what could be posted on Facebook. 

Back on 12/21/12, it was an altogether different celebration. In Dayton, Ohio, we celebrated a wedding. My oldest son Pete and my 2 now, going on 3 year daughter said their, ”I Do’s.” We got to talk on the phone with them last night as they marked their 2nd anniversary. We talked to our daughter/sister in Alaska as well. Her birthday, just a long week earlier was still fresh in our celebrating. 

When I got home the rain had let up but the patio was still wet. I gathered scrap wood from a barrel in the basement and built a mini-bonfire in the chiminea. Sitting in front of the fire, I watched flames leap out of the stack, sparks rising and disappearing in the dark. 12/21 is winter solstice; has been since they adopted the Gregorian calendar in 1582. Solstice must be the earliest, most enduring celebration in the history of human-kind. I love it. The longest night of the year signals longer days, more sunlight and the promise of warmer weather. The warmer weather takes a while, like 4 months but the promise is something you can hang onto. It will happen. From their cave-condos, our ancestors associated longer hours of daylight, even by a few minutes; before they knew what a minute was, with the return of warm weather. 

In Great Britain, Pagan Druids worshiped trees and burned logs in sacrifice on that longest night of the year. Out of that tradition came the Yule Log. Decorating trees and the Yule Log were later incorporated into Christian tradition, a way to help assimilate pagans into the new, Roman religion. So I sing, “Silent Night” and, “God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen” in keeping with the new. I also build a bonfire on the longest night, in keeping with the old. 

PLAN FOR THE DAY

My plan for the day was to mat and frame some photographs for a show I’m hanging in the spring. I’ve never done that before and I need help. Today my helper couldn’t make it so we rescheduled for another day. I called a friend and asked if he would help me size the gallery space, come up with the ideal number of pieces and frame sizes to best fit the room. So imagine two little old men with tape measures and sketchpad, fumbling around the gallery. Straight out, it was reminiscent of an old, Laurel & Hardy movie. We arranged empty frames up against blank panels and debated the merits of here or there, large or small, vertical or horizontal. After a couple of hours, we had a new plan. It looks like 23 pieces, plus or minus; and three different sizes. I love it when I have a plan. I never stick to the plan but it’s nice to know there is one. 

I’ve known Nelson since 2008; we go to the same church. We both have kids in Alaska and we teamed up on a big road trip. We drove my daughter’s car to Washington then took it on the boat, up the inland passage. He flew back after a week or so and I stayed in Anchorage for a couple of months. I hadn’t seen him recently; I was down on the gulf coast for thanksgiving and he was in N.Y. for the Macy’s Parade. His career was all about how crop insurance should work in 3rd world countries and mine was about teenagers and the difference between momentum and inertia. He is a good friend. 

It was lunch time when we finished and the weather today was unbelievable, Here it is, warm and sunny in mid December. We both wanted to eat outside as the weather will surely close down soon, leaving us to sit in a booth next to a window and watch winter go by. So we landed at a little sandwich shop on the Country Club Plaza. It’s a high end shopping district, built in the 20’s, with Spanish architecture and pricy shops. I had a salad and he got a sandwich. Our table was in a sunny corner, out of the wind. I have forgotten what we talked about but I always do. 

Nelson wanted to walk for a while, for exercise and to look in the shops. A young woman with dark, pulled back hair and full, rosy cheeks was stationed by the door of her store. It was a tea place. That’s it. They sold tea and tea pots. She had a couple of tea urns and lots of small cups for samples. While I was sipping my Orang Blossom tea, she updated me on the wonders of their exotic product. She said the sweetener was all natural and unprocessed. I asked if she had to go to Nepal to learn about unprocessed sweeteners. Nepal is after all, where Tea Gods dwell. She told me no, that her cohort standing beside us, shaking tea out of one large tin into smaller tins had trained her. So I asked her boss if she had been to Nepal to learn the tea trade. She laughed and I sipped a second sample. I spent eight dollars on two ounces of Orange Blossom tea, sampling another cup as I went out the door. I’ll make a point to drink some tea before the new year or, its aroma is so nice I could use it for a potpourri. 

I’ve got a new wood shop project going on in the basement that requires rabbets and dados. I belong to the Kansas City Woodworkers Guild. They have a world class work shop with top of the line power tools.  I go there when I need powerful, precision equipment or someone over my shoulder, telling me either, “No, not like that,” or, “yes, you got it.” That’s my plan for tomorrow. My holiday greetings are stuffed in their envelopes and stamped, ready to go. I’ll probably wait another day or two before I send them on their way. 

IDLE

Thanks Giving came and went without a hitch. I made fish & shrimp tacos; halibut from Alaska and fresh, Gulf shrimp. Couldn’t be thankful though without cranberry sauce, (orange zest and pecans) and cornbread stuffing. Skipped all the football in favor of PBS. Louisiana: good food and music and I count on that. The Indian Pow Wow was way-cool. Spent a couple of days ratting around antique shops in Mississippi and am now sitting under a tin roof shelter house on the beach; Pensacola, FL.  My action on the computer is about all that is going on. Sun is starting to get low and gulls are all perched on their favorite pilings. Birds are great fliers but even better at conserving energy. They don’t fly unless it’s about food, sex or survival. Right now, they’re all happy to be idle. Except for the occasional acorn falling on the tin roof and shadows getting longer, one could make a case for suspended animation. 

A while ago, a guy was fishing with a cast net off the pier and a Great Blue Heron was shadowing him. I wanted to see how close I could get before it flew. Looking through my camera lens I started inching up on it; had to keep adjusting the zoom out to keep it all in frame. So close I thought I’d step on its foot and then a croak that sounded really insulting. Sounded like, “What in the #!!# do you want?” in Heron-ese. It opened up its wings and stroked twice, to the other side of the boardwalk. Not exactly wildlife photography. I’m on my way north tomorrow. I’ll miss 70’s and sunshine but If I plan right, it will be meal time when I get to Memphis.